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Your encoding ladder controls the visual quality of all video that you deliver, but there are few absolutes. Ask five experts to design the optimal encoding ladder, and you’d get five different answers. That said, there are some tools and concepts you can use to identify where you may need to tweak our ladder, all…

As quality metrics go, PSNR is considered a blunt tool obsoleted by higher end metrics like Netflix’s VMAF or SSIMwave’s SSIMplus. That said, it’s accessible and understood, and has been used for years. Of course, none of that matters if it delivers misleading results. So that’s what I decided to test in a round of two…

Download handouts from this session below. Here’s the description. As video resolutions increase and target playback platforms multiply, video producers must leave their H.264/HLS/HDS comfort zone and expand into HEVC, VP9, and MPEG-DASH. This workshop is divided into multiple segments by target platform to teach you the applicable standards and best strategies for delivering live…

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve updated the Streaming Learning Center design to enable an improved learning experience. As part of this redesign, I’ll be holding more educational webinars. The first is a six-part webinar series entitled Rebuild Your Encoding Ladder. If you haven’t looked at your encoding ladder in awhile, you’ll find this course particularly useful…

Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg in 30 Minutes or Less, is an entry-level book for developers who need to produce single MP4 or adaptive groups with FFmpeg, the free, open-source utility used in some of the largest encoding farms in the world. The book also includes a primer on terms and technologies related to…

At the recent World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC), Apple announced that the next versions of Safari, iOS, and tvOS will support HLS with HEVC encoded video. This puts Apple firmly in the HEVC camp, with the Alliance for Open Media camp (Amazon, Cisco, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, and many others) supporting the AV1 codec…

If you’re interested in learning about HDR production, check out three articles on the Streaming Media website. Blackest Blacks: Ten Things to Know About Producing HDR. The feature story details what HDR is and how to produce. Love the catchy teaser (which I didn’t write). “Shake your viewers all night long with the best-looking…

Below you can download a sample chapter of my new book, Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg in 30 Minutes or Less. It’s Chapter 12 Encoding HEVC, and I’m making it available for free for two reasons. First and most important, the HEVC-related content in my other book, Video Encoding by the Numbers, is flat out wrong. So…

Just back from Streaming Media East where I was interviewed by Tim Siglin on Facebook Live about my new book. I downloaded the video file from Facebook and wanted to create a quick excerpt, but Premiere Pro crashed twice during my initial edits, so I updated to the newest release. That fixed the crashes, but…

Here’s the description; handout is below. LS103 – Technologies for Live Streaming to Multiple Platforms Streaming to one live streaming service is so 2016. Today, in addition to streaming to your own website or app, you may want to distribute your live stream to multiple other outlets like Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Livestream, Twitter, and…